After a long and relatively meaningless pre-season, the Edmonton Oilers are finally going to play some games that matter.
Fans can only hope it will be a vast improvement over the games that didn’t.
We’ve learned long ago that you should never read anything into pre-season. Whether it’s Ty Rattie or Brendan Perlini tearing up the scoresheet or the Oilers going 6-1 or 1-6, we all know that the exhibition schedule is a lot like Las Vegas — what happens there, stays there.
Pre-season is the driving range of life: You can stand on the mat and stripe everything down the middle and then slice your first tee shot straight into the woods. And you can go an entire bucket without making solid contact and then par your first three holes.
So, we shouldn’t get too worried about the Edmonton’s pre-season, should we? We shouldn’t be worried that they looked like lukewarm bathwater, going 3-5, tying for ninth in the Western Conference and getting outscored 36-19? Or that the power play ranked 22nd, the penalty kill 29th and Stuart Skinner had an .880 save percentage over 164 minutes of action?
Nah.
Right?
It doesn’t matter that Darnell Nurse, who missed most of the pre-season and was minus 3 in two games, only played with his new defence partner, Ty Emberson, once? Or that Jeff Skinner was minus four in four games, Viktor Arvidsson was minus five and the second line chemistry with Leon Draisaitl isn’t there yet?
Nope. According to Draisaitl, all of this will be forgotten when the puck drops for real.
“I, personally, don’t put a lot of stock into it,” he said after practice Monday. “Do we have to be a lot better than what we’ve shown? Yeah. But I think it’s fair to say that sometimes it’s tough going from a Stanley Cup Final Game 7 to a pre-season game on a Wednesday night.
“Not saying you’re not trying the same but sometimes it just takes a little bit longer to find your game and find your legs. There shouldn’t be any motivational issues on (opening) night.”
If the Oilers were saving it for the regular season, you can’t blame them. It’s totally understandable. When the last game you played was Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, you’re not going to get fired up for Game 7 of the pre-season, no matter how loudly your inner self tells you it still matters.
So, it’s very likely that this was just a human nature thing that will take care of itself when then points start counting.
Right?
“Well, that’s what I hope,” laughed head coach Kris Knoblauch, who could tell from the start of camp that there was still a bit of mental hangover. “A lot of their minds were on the Stanley Cup playoffs, whether it was last year’s or the upcoming season.
“I think it is human nature. Just the intensity of the Stanley Cup Finals and now coming into the exhibition season it’s not there. Personally, I felt it going into that first exhibition game and I’m wearing a suit. I’m not the one wearing the equipment. I’m not the one competing on the ice. I can only imagine what it feels like for them.
“But now that we’re heading into the regular season I think guys are getting a little more focused, a little more ready.”
Beyond the emotional letdown, though, there were still some training camp questions that didn’t provide the answers the Oilers were hoping for. The second line is still being sorted out, with Mattias Janmark taking the place of Skinner at practice Monday, and the right side of the second and third defence pairings are a work in progress.
But, as the coach and players say, it’s best to save the judgment for the games that matter.
“I don’t put a lot of stock in the exhibition games, it’s mostly evaluation,” said Knoblauch. “But certainly we need to find it and be ready for the regular season because we want to put ourselves into a good position to make the playoffs and hopefully have home ice advantage for several rounds.”
The bright side to the mediocre pre-season is that the Oilers aren’t trying to fool themselves. They are well aware of the training camp malaise and even addressed the issue in a recent team meeting.
“We just talked about the importance of the regular season,” said Knoblauch. “Yes, it’s tough to get up for those exhibition games. But if we want to not have the start the Oilers had last year we need to make sure we’re ready and prepared.
“Part of it is your body being ready for it but more importantly it’s your mind. We’ll see how it goes. But we have a mature group that’s focused and they’ll be ready on Wednesday.”
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